During an appearance on Fox News, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) claimed that indicted former President Donald Trump “has not ever said anything xenophobic or racist about immigrants.”
That would be news to anyone that’s paid attention to Trump’s xenophobic or racist remarks since descending the escalators of Trump Tower in June 2015 to kick off his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants criminals, drug dealers, and “rapists.” In fact, the very day that Luna appeared on Fox News with Laura Ingraham (who is quite the xenophobe in her own right), Trump continued to double down on language claiming that immigrants are “poisoning” the blood of America. This, without any question, is echoing the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler and other authoritarians throughout history.
Trump’s dangerous and outrageous “poisoning” rhetoric is just one of the many racist or xenophobic remarks he’s made against immigrants, Latinos, and others since 2015. Here are 24 of some of the worst he’s said:
April 2024: Trump attacks immigrants as “animals,” continuing a trend going back to at least 2018. “The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals … Nancy Pelosi told me that. She said, ‘Please don’t use the word animals when you’re talking about these people.’ I said, ‘I’ll use the word animal because that’s what they are.'”
April 2024: Trump reportedly laments the arrival of non-white immigrants: “Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries, I’m trying to be nice. Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”
March 2024: Trump defends horrific claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country. During an interview with Fox News, Trump defended his use of vile language echoing the rhetoric of Hitler: “I didn’t know that,” Trump claimed, “but that’s what they say. Because our country is being poisoned.”
March 2024: Trump says immigrants are “not people” while promising a “bloodbath” if he doesn’t win the election. “I don’t know if you call them people, in some cases, they’re not people in my opinion … I’ve seen the humanity and these humanity, these are bad, these are animals.”
March 2024: Trump employs deadly white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theory against migrants, claiming they are an “invasion” and “horrible people” who are “conquering” the US. “I will stop this invasion. I’m going to do it. I will stop the killing. I will stop the bloodshed. I will end the agony of our people, the plunder of our cities, the sacking of our towns, the violation of our citizens and the conquest of our country. They’re conquering our country. These people are conquering our country. They’re horrible people.”
February 2024: Trump again reiterates support for “Operation Wetback,” the Eisenhower deportation plan named after a racial slur. Trump promises to enact “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” to tear apart and purge millions of families from the U.S. Immigrants “should not get comfortable because very soon they will be going home,” his campaign spokesperson boasted.
December 2023: Trump repeats his claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation. “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison — mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America. Not just the three or four countries that we think about. But all over the world they’re coming into our country — from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
September 2023: Trump echoes Nazi rhetoric to disparage immigrants. “It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”
October 2021: Trump uses racist trope to attack Haitian immigrants. “So we have hundreds of thousands of people flowing in from Haiti. Haiti has a tremendous AIDS problem. … Many of those people will probably have AIDS, and they’re coming into our country. And we don’t do anything about it. We let everybody come in … It’s like a death wish for our country.”
August 2020: Trump pushes a racist lie that Kamala Harris, a U.S. citizen and daughter of immigrants, is ineligible for VP. “I just heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements … I have no idea if that’s right.”
March 2020: Trump refers to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” platforming a racist trope associating immigrants with disease. “The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!”
2019: Trump uses “invasion” to describe immigrants at least 21 times in the months leading up to the El Paso shooting, which was carried out by a racist gunman obsessed with a so-called “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. “People hate the word ‘invasion,’ but that’s what it is. It’s an invasion of drugs and criminals and people.”
May 2019: Trump laughs when a supporter suggests shooting migrants at the border. “When he asked the crowd, ‘How do you stop these people?’ one rally attendee shouted, ‘Shoot them.’ At first laughing, Trump responded, ‘That’s only in the [Florida] panhandle, can you get away with that statement.’”
June 2018: Trump echoes Nazi rhetoric, says immigrants “infest” the country. “[Democrats] don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. They can’t win on their terrible policies, so they view them as potential voters!”
May 2018: Trump dehumanizes immigrants as non-human. “These aren’t people. These are animals.”
January 2018: Trump reportedly rails on non-white immigrants, calls Haiti a “shithole” nation. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
June 2016: Trump hurls attack against Judge Curiel, a U.S. citizen and son of Mexican immigrants. “His name is Gonzalo Curiel. The judge, who happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great, I think that’s fine.” Trump doubles-down: “Now, this judge is of Mexican heritage … We are building a wall. He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico.” Then-Speaker Ryan condemns Trump: “Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
June 2016: Trump claims Mexican immigrants are moving drugs for cartels and that they are spreading disease. “The largest suppliers of heroin, cocaine and other illicit drugs are Mexican cartels that arrange to have Mexican immigrants trying to cross the borders and smuggle in the drugs. The Border Patrol knows this. Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border.”
July 2016: Trump disparages Gold Star immigrant parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan following their appearance at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably—maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.” USA Today: “Trump continued to tweet about the Khans, saying the story shouldn’t be about him but rather ‘radical Islamic terrorism and the U.S.’”
December 2015: Trump calls for banning Muslims from the U.S. “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” Trump implemented a version of the discriminatory policy in March 2017, and expanded it to six African nations in 2020.
August 2015: Trump attacks Jorge Ramos, a respected journalist and naturalized U.S. citizen. “Sit down, you weren’t called. Go back to Univision.” Outside the Iowa press conference, Ramos is also attacked by a Trump supporter: “Get out of my country.”
August 2015: Trump defends two Trump supporters that assaulted a Latino man in Boston. Scott Leader, one of the two men who assaulted the man, told police officers that “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.” Trump defends the men: “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate.”
June 2015: Trump descends Trump Tower escalators to call Mexicans criminals and rapists. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Trump defends “rapists” remark: “Well, somebody’s doing the raping, Don! I mean somebody’s doing it! Who’s doing the raping? Who’s doing the raping?”
Trump is not alone in his extremism, of course. In continued proof of the GOP’s descent on immigration, Luna this year called for the return of family separation, one of the Trump administration’s most horrific and cruel policies. While the Biden administration has reunited 700 kids, hundreds of others remain separated. Yet this wasn’t the first time that Luna has called for the return of this policy, last year falsely claiming that separations must continue because “children were largely being exploited.” We’ve said it before, and we’ll continue to say it: as horrific as their policies were the first time, they have made it clear that the second time will be far worse.
